Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
391-408 (2004)
International Pragmatics Association
INTER-MIND PHENOMENA
IN CHILD NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
Barbara Bokus1
Abstract
A review of the current literature shows that by the age of two and a half (and probably earlier), children have
already acquired a rich working knowledge of human intentionality and goal-directed action (Stein & Albro
1997: 7; Mandler 1998). The paper focuses on the ways in which children use this knowledge to tell stories
from pictures. The story is the description of the actions performed by animate actors. We distinguish the main
actors (protagonists in the narrative line) and the background actors (participants in the narrative field) who
can observe and interpret what is going on in the main action. So the narrative text contains not only the action
presented by the story-teller (landscape of action) but also how this action is interpreted by the story characters
(landscape of consciousness). They are all thinking minds who can think similarly or differently about the plot.
And the narrator uses characters' minds to produce different representations of the story (Bokus 1998, 2000).
The narrator can confront one interpretation with another, and a) makes choices of the "true" representation of
the main action (in doing this the child plays the role of the omniscient and omnipresent story-teller who is
directly in touch with the ontology of the story), or b) presents a possible but not a certain story reality (the
listener is not told how things are but rather how they seem to be). Therefore we can speak about the interplay
of the narrator's mind and the minds of story characters in a kind of internal narrator's dialogue. The storyteller creates different minds and alternative ways of interpreting the main action. Also shown are examples of
such inter-mind phenomena in the stories told by preschool children.
Keywords: Child Discourse, Dual Narrative Landscape, Narrative Line, Narrative Field, Theory of Mind.
1. Introduction
More than twenty-five years ago (in 1978), in her influential article entitled The child as
psychologist: Construing the social world Maureen M. Shields wrote as follows:
Surely it is time that the cognitive psychologist came face to face with the young naive psychologist,
and turned his sophisticated techniques to building a more adequate model of the growth of man's
concept of man (Shields 1978: 556).
This article is based on an invited paper presented by the author at the Turku Symposium on First
language Acquisition (Turku, 1-2 September 2000) and a text of an invited lecture prepared for the Lublin
conference Jedna lub wicej narracji [One or more narrations] (wita Katarzyna, 11-14 September 2003).
Preparation of the article was partially supported by Grant BST 671/17. Grateful acknowledgment is due to
Professor Grace Wales Shugar for her careful reading and constructive comments on an earlier version of this
text.
Developmental cognitive science has undergone great changes since 1978, and has
developed theoretical systems to show how and when children develop a folk psychology or
"theory of mind", the understanding of others as psychological beings having mental states
as beliefs, desires, emotions and intentions. According to Meltzoff (1995: 839), recent
research on children's understanding of mind has been focused on two questions:
(a) mentalism: How and when do children begin to construe others as having
psychological states that underlie behavior?
(b) representational model of mind: How and when do children come to
understand mental states as active representations of the world and not simply copies or
imprints of it?
Of crucial importance in social cognition development (see Tomasello 1999) is a
continuous progression in children's understanding of others, as follows:
-animate agents, in common with all primates (infancy);
- intentional agents, a species-unique way of understanding conspecifics, which
includes an understanding of both the goal-directed behavior and the attention of
others (one year); and
- mental agents, the understanding that other persons have not just intentions and
attention as manifest in their behavior, but also thoughts and beliefs which may or
may not be expressed in behavior - and which may differ from the "real" situation
(four years). (Tomasello 1999: 179)
False belief tests conducted by many researchers have shown the apparent
acquisition at around age 4 of an ability to understand the representational status of mind. In
some studies a narrative context influenced children's false belief reasoning. When children
(even 3-year-olds) are given the opportunity to link discrete events into a coherent narrative,
they have no problem demonstrating an understanding of others' minds. Being able to
recount the narrative is sufficient for successful performance (Lewis et al. 1994: 397). This
confirms earlier results by Macnamara, Baker, and Olson (1976). Over twenty-seven years
ago these authors, and later Abbeduto and Rosenberg (1985), showed that a story context
facilitates children's understanding of presuppositions of mental states conveyed by the
verbs "know", "remember", "forget", "think", even if the story does not provide direct
information about such mental states.
In light of the above mentioned studies, it is difficult to understand an asymmetry in
the literature concerned with the child as psychologist, between research on theory of mind
and research on narrative development (see Bokus 1996a; Nicolopoulou 1999). Compare
the following (see Nicolopoulou & Richner 1999a: 1):
- theory-of-mind research: Children begin to talk about mental states at 2-3 years
and develop a representational theory of mind around 4 years of age (e.g., Astington 1993;
Gopnik & Meltzoff 1997; Flavell & Miller 1998);
- narrative research: Children begin to develop psychological portrayals of
characters around 7 years and consolidate this ability around 10 years of age (e.g.,
Bamberg & Damrad-Frye 1991; Hudson & Shapiro 1991; Stein & Albro 1997; KielarTurska 1999).
Two independent projects (similar in main features) were conducted by
Nicolopoulou (1999a, 1999b) and Bokus (1996a, 1998, 2000) in an effort to resolve the
above-mentioned discrepancy. Nicolopoulou and her collaborators stated that, in most
narrative research, experimental elicitation techniques restrict children's character
representation. Adult-oriented and artificial contexts for story production exclude resources
and motivations that lead children to generate richer and more sophisticated stories
(Nicolopoulou & Richner 1999a: 1). The solution proposed by Nicolopoulou is to examine
spontaneous narratives produced in the social context of children's everyday group life. In
this context children tell stories not only to adults but primarily to each other. In Bokus'
studies children tell stories either to adult or to child listeners. The most significant feature
of Bokus' studies is that the listener's sole means of learning what happened is through the
child narration (The narrator talks about a picture/picture-book which only he or she can
see. In such a situation the child narrator is the only source of new information on story
topic). In both projects, by Nicolopoulou and by Bokus, children not only tell stories but
also act out their stories. The narration is the preparatory step enabling children to play the
different roles of the story characters during a performance. The narrator knows for what
purpose he or she reports information to the listener. The task makes human sense in the
terms of the author of Children's minds (Donaldson 1978: 17). The present paper is
concerned with actions presented in narrative discourse and with the mental states that
young narrators ascribe to their story characters. The theoretical background of this study is
derived from Bruner's conception of a dual narrative landscape (Bruner 1986) and Bokus'
conception of two narrative dimensions - narrative line and narrative field (Bokus 1996b).
Bruner's term subjunctive reality denotes a possible, not a certain, reality which is
not entirely determined by the speaker, but is partially created by the listener (see also Eco
1994). The discourse processes that are used to subjunctivize reality are fundamental to the
language of narrative, and to the creation of a dual landscape: one of the world of action
depicted in the story, the other of the world of consciousness in the minds both of story
characters and narrator (Astington 1990). According to Bokus (1996a), story characters can
be distinguished as subjects of the narrative line and subjects of the narrative field. The
narrative line presents the course of changes of referenced reality over time. Agents of
actions changing referenced reality are the heroes of the narrative line. Subjects that are not
engaged directly in changes of referenced reality, figuring, as it were, in the background,
we have called participants in the narrative field. In light of our previous studies (Bokus
1996b), narrators introduced field subjects related in some way to subjects in the narrative
line, as follows:
1) spatial relation
2) observer - observed relation
2. Problem
While many studies deal with children's understanding of action and consciousness in
stories they listen to (Britton & Pellegrini 1990), the current study is an attempt to approach
two other questions:
1. When do children start to produce stories with a dual landscape?
[This question was formulated by Astington (1990: 167), and is repeated here]
2. How is the duality (landscape of action and landscape of consciousness)
constructed in children's narratives?
5. Results
We didn't observe any mental attributions by three-year-old narrators. The analysis dealt
only with narratives by 4-7-year-olds.
It turned out that field subjects were ascribed states of consciousness which were
attempts at interpretations about the content of the narrative line. Attributing these
interpretations to narrative field subjects, the narrator presented the main action from their
perspectives. Our analyses confirmed that the narrator was taking another mind's
perspective. How otherwise could one explain that the same action taking place in the
foreground of the picture was interpreted in different categories by peer and non-peer field
subjects. Analyses (Bokus 1998) have shown that narrators aged 4 to 7 seem to attribute a
different optic to symmetrical and asymmetrical participants in reference to the actions in
the narrative line. To adults they impute "why" interpretations in terms of causes of a
given state of action or of absence of a desired action, and interpretations in categories of
consequences of action (rewards and penalties for the heroes).
For example,
(2)
Pan rybak sobie myli : "Dlaczego Jacek i Wacek bawi si sami nad rzek.
Zgubili si mamusi?"
The fisherman is thinking: "Why are Jacek and Wacek playing alone beside the
river. Did they lose their mummy?" [S.K. 4;9]
(3)
To peer participants, on the other hand, narrators impute "what for", "how to
achieve a given goal", and "was it achieved", interpretations that accentuate teleological
links in episodic action (motive/goal of heroes' action, realization of the action plan /steps
and manner of action/, and result of action).
For example,
(4)
Figure 1 shows the frequencies of each mental state category attributed to narrative
field subjects in reference to heroes adventures.
Frequencies (%)
100
80
Episodic actions
60
Causes
40
Consequences
20
0
4
Frequencies (%)
100
80
Episodic actions
60
Causes
Consequences
40
20
0
4
5
Age of narrator (years)
Incomplete interpretation
(5)
I sobie myla:
"Dlaczego dzieci s nad rzek sami, bez mamusi? Uciekli mamusi?"
A to byo tak. Tomek chcia pokaza abki dla Wacka... i Jacka nad rzek.
Mamusia nie daa i nad rzek.
No to uciekli mamusi. I polecieli.
Nie znaleli Tomka. Nie znaleli abki.
Ale bya tam pika.
I grali. Znaleli pik i grali.
And he was thinking:
"Why are the children at the river without (their) Mummy? They ran away
from (their) Mummy?"
And it was like this. Tomek wanted to show froggies for Wacek and Jacek
at the river.
They couldn't get Mummy to go to the river.
So they ran away from Mummy. And they ran off.
They didn't find Tomek.
They didn't find any froggies.
But there was a ball there.
And they played. They found a ball and played. [J.G. 5;8]
(7)
Frequencies (%)
Figure 2 presents frequencies of the different kinds of narrator operations upon the
contents of mental states attributed to narrative field participants.
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Supplementation
Negation/Modification
Confirmation of
possible interpretations
4
Fig. 2. Reference operations performed by the narrator upon field subjects representations
of heroes adventures
A loglinear analysis based on the empirical data showed a significant main effect
[L2 (2)= 28.28403, p<0.000001] of the interaction between narrators age and different
kinds of reference operations performed by the narrator upon field subjects' representations
of the main action (see detailed data in Appendix 2).
In light of the above analyses of the data we can answer the questions posed in this
study as follows:
Preschool children start to produce stories with a dual landscape. We found a
developmental change in the way narrative constructions are built. Starting with 4-yearolds, narrators co-construct with narrative field subjects a representation of the main action
line. They ascribe some questions to these subjects and then they answer these questions.
With 5- and 6-year-olds we observed a new way of constructing dual representations (that
of narrator and that of field subjects) by confrontation of different representations leading to
the narrator deciding on the true version of the main action. But not always is the narrator
sure of the true version: Sometimes he or she responds to the version presented by the field
subject (imputed by himself/herself to this subject) by presenting still another possible
version which may or may not be the true one. Only in this case does the narrator use modal
forms such as perhaps, maybe, and uses as well performative (illocutionary) verbs like
think in first person (I think that...).
6. Discussion
Following Bruner's theory, narrative requires:
1/ "agentivity" - action directed toward goals controlled by agents;
2/ linearization of events and states;
3/ sensitivity to what is canonical and what violates canonicality in human
interaction;
4/ something approximating a narrator's perspective - narrative cannot, in the jargon
of narratology, be "voiceless" (see Bruner 1990: 77).
This paper focuses on voices of the narrator's mind (see Voices of the mind by
Wertsch 1991). The same adventures shown in the pictorial material are narrated differently
depending on how the story-teller "reads" the minds of narrative subjects. In the light of our
studies, the preschool narrator uses field subjects' minds to better understand the course of
changes in referenced reality and to explain states and actions in the narrative line. The
narrator takes different perspectives which he/she attributes to story characters who are
located in the narrative field and are observing the foreground events. By age three most
children are explicitly aware that looking leads to knowing (Pratt & Bryant 1990: 980).
Many studies provide clear evidence that children are able to make correct judgments about
the mental states of individuals who have or have not had visual access to something (ibid :
980; see also Pillow 1989; Bartsch & Wellman 1998; Bokus 1991, 1998), here: To actions
of the heroes of the narrative line. Apparently making other persons (observers of the
foreground events) think about the story forces the narrator to incorporate their
perspectives. So the narrative text contains not only the action presented by the story-teller
(in the landscape of action) but also how this action is interpreted by the characters of the
story (landscape of consciousness). As said above, they are all thinking minds that can think
similarly or differently about the plot. And the narrator uses characters' minds either to coproduce one representation (answering questions ascribed to field subjects) or to produce
different representations of the story. He/she can confront one interpretation with another,
and can do the following: The narrator can choose the "true" representation of the main
action or can present a possible - but not a certain - story reality. In the first case, the child
acts as the omniscient and omnipresent story-teller directly in touch with the ontology of the
story. In the second case, the child presents a possible story reality. The listener is not told
how things are but how they seem to be. Therefore we can speak about an interplay of the
narrator's mind and the minds of story characters in a kind of internal narrator's dialogue.
The story-teller creates different minds and alternative ways of interpreting the main
action. We here show examples of such inter-mind phenomena in the stories told by
preschool children. From these examples a narrative can be conceived of as multivoiced like
in Hermans theory of a self-narration (1997: 260) and, earlier, in Bakhtin's view (1973, see
also Wertsch 1991). Different interpretations (by the narrator and by peer or non-peer
characters) of the foreground action are presented in a dialogical fashion. The main strategy
of the narrator's dialogue is to attribute to story characters representations of the changing
reality and to perform basic operations upon attributed representations from the perspective
of the narrator's image of what was going on. Co-construction of reference reality enriches
the meaning potential of narrative discourse. The same foreground reality is shown to be
described and explained in various ways. The narrator's perspective selects one, or even
more than one, of these ways in narrative construction. The results of our study can be
explained in terms of Shield's (1978) conception, formulated as follows:
The child's image of the world is mirrored twice, once directly and again as a representation of the
representations of others. (...) Each image modifies and extends the other (Shields 1978: 556).
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Appendix 1.
Examples of two variants of picture-book A
Appendix 2.
Results of loglinear analysis based on the empirical data
Main features:
1. Narrators age
2. Pictorial material
3. Narrative field subject (child, adult)
4. Mental attribution
5. Reference operation upon mental attribution
Effect
Degrs.of
Freedom
Prt.Ass.
Chi-sqr.
Prt.Ass.
p
Mrg.Ass.
Chi-sqr.
Mrg.Ass.
p
1
2
3
4
5
12
13
14
15
23
24
25
34
35
45
123
124
125
134
135
145
234
235
245
345
1234
1235
1245
1345
2345
2
2
1
1
1
4
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
4
4
4
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
4
4
4
2
2
2.91835
29.63397
7.74048
16.38945
10.25775
.56021
1.60700
.41912
28.18393
.23139
3.08864
.90868
90.35529
.02709
.10216
.28882
.55740
2.03127
.36258
.08883
.63829
2.92233
.54821
.01267
.00367
.24699
2.57260
3.16832
4.87046
.24579
.232443
.000000
.005403
.000052
.001362
.967380
.447768
.810941
.000001
.890748
.213473
.634870
.000000
.869272
.749253
.990524
.967677
.730007
.834193
.956557
.726772
.231982
.760254
.993687
.951677
.992974
.631688
.530072
.087594
.884359
2.91835
29.63397
7.74048
16.38945
10.25775
.71996
1.00977
.02351
28.28403
2.42799
5.41162
1.23332
92.12758
.04243
.42889
.79356
.56721
1.74095
.45623
.18318
.53902
3.17101
1.25662
.50119
.00562
.28902
2.38547
3.67171
5.00610
.25650
.232443
.000000
.005403
.000052
.001362
.948844
.603581
.988312
.000001
.297022
.066831
.539750
.000000
.836795
.512537
.939307
.966635
.783265
.796034
.912479
.763757
.204860
.533499
.778339
.940226
.990512
.665258
.452268
.081851
.879632